Finished reading Nowhere People by Paulo Scott.

This novel describes issues bothering Brazil's indigenous population, particularly dispossessed Guarani Indians.

She stood dressed in red as she threw back her head

Saying, "my tits have blocked the view of my car"

Finished reading JOSEPH CONRAD: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers.

Conrad was an amazing man. Born in Russian-occupied Poland in 1857, he emigrated to England, learned the English language there, and eventually wrote some of the best books in English Literature. He is one of my favourite authors. When I departed from Guyana 18 years ago, one of the books I brought along to Canada was Conrad's novel Nostromo.

Jeffrey Meyers' biography of Conrad is excellent, well researched and readable.

Finished reading BELONGING: The Paradox of Citizenship by Adrienne Clarkson.

This book comprises texts of the CBC-sponsored 2014 Massey Lectures delivered by Ms Clarkson, Canada's 26th Governor-General and former CBC journalist.

She argues that there needs to be a sense of belonging between the individual and society. She gives examples in ancient Greece, France, Bhutan and Canada.

She shows how Canada has distinguished itself over time as a unique, caring, forgiving, pluralistic/multicultural society. "We belong to each other in this country," she says.

Acknowledging that Canada still has flaws to straighten out, Ms Clarkson says immigrants must be prepared to accept the bad with the good when they arrive here.

Finished reading SOLAR by bestselling and prizewinning English novelist Ian McEwan. It's about a brilliant physicist who won the Nobel Prize and wide acclaim in scientific circles but who has a messy personal life.

This is the first Ian McEwan novel I've read and I will certainly get hold of more of his books. A fine writer he is.

Finished reading The Metamorphosis, a novella by Czech-born writer Franz Kafka. This is a simple tale that can be interpreted in more ways than one. A young travelling salesman, virtual breadwinner for ageing parents and young sister, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a cockroach-like insect. How does he live after that? What effect his metamorphosis has on his family?

This is most likely the last book I've read for 2014, making it #42, seven less books than I read last year. My reading plan for 2015 includes a number of classics. At last, I will take up Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

will start "The King's Deception" by Steve Berry, from the blurb i read it looks good.

I lived a couple of blocks from that bookstore for some 10 years and spent lots of evenings there listening to lectures or readings by authors and getting my books signed. It is a cool place to walk to in the evenings to browse and read. They let you stay as long as you want.

Since the start of this year I've finished reading the following:

[1] CONSPIRATOR: Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaport

[2] SWEET TOOTH by Ian McEwan

[3] THREE NIGHTS IN HAVANA by Robert Wright

[4] MY YEARS AS PRIME MINISTER by Jean Chrétien

[5] THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST by Mohsin Hamid

The Metamorphosis is a great piece of writing. If you like Russian writers I highly recommend Nikolai Gogol. For me he is number one.

Anta, some time ago I read Dead Souls by Gogol. Many years ago in Guyana I had read his short story The Overcoat. I must read that story again. Touching.

Absolutely. He has a collection of short stories on the same level as Poe. Also Taras Bulba is a masterpiece, and quite different from the movie.

Finished reading the novel SHE by H. Rider Haggard. Since this book was first published 128 years ago it has never been out of print. It's about a journey three Englishmen made to 19th century east Africa to find out about an ancient family history. Adventures, misadventures, tragedy, and a living 2,000 year-old-white queen combine to make the story interesting.

When I was 11 years old I borrowed SHE from the Uitvlugt Community Centre Library but couldn't understand anything and returned it mostly unread. Now, 53 years later I decided to borrow it from the Toronto Public Library and I like the story so much I wonder why it took me so long to get my hands on it.

Bookie, hubby beat you in reading...

One day I asked him when last he read a novel... he said to me "I read 3 to 4 books per day; 5 days a week.  That's enough reading for me."

I am sure you get what he is hinting about...

Finished reading Glimpses of a Global Life by Shridath Ramphal. I am indebted to this outstanding Guyanese whom I've long admired and respected since the early 1970s when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs. His public speaking skills were on par with Forbes Burnham's. His writing skills are just as remarkable. This book retraces his working life from constitutional lawyer in Jamaica to Commonwealth Secretary General to chancellor of three universities and so on.

I will be re reading 'Miguel Street'...I love that book.

Bogart in jail

Bogart actually existed, you know.

Many years later, VS Naipaul traveled to Venezuela and met him there. By then, Bogart had outlived his Miguel Street personality and was more subdued.

wow I had no idea, tnks for letting us know.

i like 'Man Man' and 'Laura doux doux' makes me laugh everytime i remember that part in the book

Finished reading The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I love this novel. The narrator is telling in 1969 a story set in the south of England between 1867 and 1869. That was a time of Victorian puritanism but, as the novel shows, also a time of hypocrisy and double standards. Class differences of the main characters brought out that hypocrisy more.

At the beginning of the novel the main character has the reputation of a prostitute but we discover later that she was actually a virgin. A woman of the lower class, she is not accepted as normal even by her social peers. She thinks differently and acts differently. I like such kinds of women.

Finished reading TO THE RIVER by Olivia Laing.

The author writes about hiking from the source of the River Ouse in Sussex England to its mouth, a distance of 46 miles. The journey lasted one week. She describes in extraordinary detail scenes along the way, and recalls the history associated with some places. She reminisces about the English writer Virginia Woolf who had deliberately drowned herself in the same river in 1941. I'm impressed with Ms Laing's deep knowledge of trees and other plants, birds and insects, so numerous along her path and she names them all.

Finished reading WHAT POETS ARE LIKE: Up and Down with the Writing Life by Gary Soto.

Shame on me, I had never heard about Gary Soto until last week when my library recommended him to me. He is a Mexican-American or Chicano poet, teacher, essayist and filmmaker. His track record is impressive: 14 poetry collections, 21 young adult/children's books, 1 play, 7 memoirs and 2 films. He won many awards.

Fresno City College in California has honoured him with a Gary Soto Literary Museum.

This particular book is a collection of personal essays. They are witty, informative, and inspiring. I'll certainly check out Gary Soto's other books.

Almost finished On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony. Excellent book.

Struggling to finish 'The Alchemist'....hoping to wrap it up this weekend, working 12 hours a day recently, just started a new job in February. 

The Alchemist. ahhhh yessss, brings back great memories...Ohhhh yeahhh that was a really good book.

Reading "Riding for the brand' by Louis Lamour, love his books.

Finished reading My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

Middlemarch is an 800+ page novel by the English writer George Eliot whose real name was Mary Ann Evans.

Rebecca Mead, a middle-aged British-born staff writer of the New Yorker magazine, first read Middlemarch in her teens and became so fascinated with the novel that she has re-read it time over time. "I think Middlemarch has disciplined my character," she writes. "I know it has become part of my own experience and my own endurance."

In My Life in Middlemarch Mead explores the life and world of George Eliot, including the English midlands of Warwickshire, the real-life setting of the fictional place, Middlemarch.

Used to read those way back in High School.

i have is collection grow up on his books 

Alena06, yes did that in high school too..i uses to fight with my brother whenever he borrowed them to read them first .

Warrior, I have some of his books, ever so often will go back and read them.

The school library was my source.  I had a few keepsakes though, but left them behind  when I left Guyana.  One of my faves was 'To kill a mockingbird'..  Got it when I came first in my High School class. 

Happy Saturday all!  Enjoy the fresh air.

Finished reading My Father's House: In Search of a Lost Past by Matthew Carr. The author is the eldest son of Bill Carr, a lecturer at the University of Guyana from 1966 until his death in 1991.

Matthew Carr, along with his mother and three siblings, had followed Bill Carr first to Jamaica where he lectured for 6 years at the UWI Mona Campus, thence to Guyana. They stayed in Guyana only 10 months and were sent packing back to England.

Bill Carr established himself in Guyana as an outstanding lecturer in English Language and English Literature, and as a competent dramatic actor at the Theatre Guild. He was less known as a PPP activist and Mirror newspaper columnist who wrote under the name Little Boy Blue. He however had his demons, principally alcoholism, and there was hardly a rum shop in and out of Georgetown that he hadn't visited.

I knew all these things before reading this book. I was shocked to discover within its pages that Bill Carr was a compulsive wife beater and a violently abusive father.

Matthew Carr retraces his steps back to Guyana five years after his father's death, visiting his grave and meeting Bill's Guyanese wife and friends to search for answers regarding Bill's  actions and motivations.

* Arrite! Gabriel Tarde's The Laws of Imitation is next on my list.

Read this:

A common fallacy is the idea that the majority sets the patterns and trends of social, economic and religious life. But history reveals quite the opposite: the majority copies or imitates the minority and this establishes the long run developments and socio economic evolutions.

* This looks like it will be an interesting read--it's true---the crowd always follow the leaders.

* Check this :

https://guyana.crowdstack.io/topic/re...ry-is-100-guaranteed

Rev

Dumbo, leave that nonsense in Political. Only an idiot would send a link showing they are one of the most despicable persons on the board.

* Michael Crichton's "Travels" is next on my list.

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am.

When Michael Crichton -- a Harvard-trained physician, bestselling novelist, and successful movie director -- began to feel isolated in his own life, he decided to widen his horizons. He tracked wild animals in the jungles of Rwanda. He climbed Kilimanjaro and Mayan pyramids. He trekked across a landslide in Pakistan. He swam amid sharks in Tahiti.

 

Fueled by a powerful curiosity and the need to see, feel, and hear firsthand and close-up, Michael Crichton has experienced adventures as compelling as those he created in his books and films. These adventures -- both physical and spiritual -- are recorded here in Travels, Crichton's most astonishing and personal work

Rev

Just finished Sugar Ray Leonard's autobiography The Big Fight. Excellent reading for anyone who follows fight sports, great just to understand what it takes to be at the top.

* Curtly Ambrose's "Time To Talk" is next on my list.

* What a great West Indian fast bowler! He is one of my favorites. He has been described as "one of the leading--and most lethal--fast bowlers of all time.

* During his career Curtly was notorious  for his silence---he rarely spoke to the press---his mantra was "Curtly talks to no one."

* Oh well! Curtly is now talking in his autobiography nicely titled "TIME TO TALK".

* This should be a fun read.

Rev

* Arrite! Next on my list is "One hundred years of Solitude" by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

* Someone once said:

Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.

* I am curious to read what Gabriel Marquez has to say in his book that has been described as "one of the 20th century's most enduring works."

Rev

Excellent choice, Rev. I read it 27 years ago. In fact, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is/was one of my favourite authors.

Finished reading Adam Bede by the 19th century English novelist George Eliot. The story is based on a real life infanticide in 1802. Eliot gives a nice realistic portrayal of life in feudal society. As I mentioned earlier, my reading plan will include more classics this year.

Finished reading HIGH SEAS MISSIONARIES: Caribbean, Guyana & Amazonia 1991 by William Cooper. The author relates his experience with a group called Youth With A Mission as they ferried relief supplies and preached the Gospel in the Caribbean, Guyana and Brazil. I like people who put their lives on hold temporarily to serve a higher cause, whether in politics or religion or the environment or just plain charity. Honor before money.

* I saw Bill Gates recommending Darrel Huff's "How To Lie With Statistics" at a TED conference, so I figure I'll take a peek.

* This book was first published in 1954. The Rev hopes to pick up a few useful tips on how to lie using stats.

Rev

I couldda swear you had mastered this book already.

* The master always needs a refresher to keep sharp my bwoy. You ought to know that.

Rev